Queerbaiting

Straight model Bella Hadid making out with CGI influencer Miquela for Calvin Klein's 'I speak my truth in my Calvins' campaign in 2019.

Queerbaiting is a term used to describe a manipulative marketing practice of using perceived or potential queerness for publicity. It has allegedly been used since the 1950s and has been used online, such as by users on the blogging platform Tumblr expressing anger over the treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals in media, and has since been expanded to include businesses and celebrities using queer imagery to appeal to the LGBTQ+ community for the sake of publicity, promotion, or capitalistic gain. Deliberate queerbaiting has a malicious element, often most-clearly seen through television media as writers and creators hint at queerness before "emphatically denying and laughing off the possibility".

Queerbaiting is not the same as queercoding, as queercoding occurs when there is "enough subtext available for an audience to read [characters] as queer", but is not necessarily manipulative, unlike queerbaiting. Joseph Brennan noted in his book that there is a distinction between "unintentional, or genuine, homoeroticism and queerbaiting" (emphasis original).

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Etymology

The term comes from the noun "queer" (not-heterosexual, not-cisgender) combined with the verb "to bait" (the act of luring, as if into a trap). It harkens from the political portmanteau of "race-baiting", which was used to bring up perceived negative details of an opponent to undermine them.

History

Historically, there has been limited representation of queer people in mainstream media; the representation that did exist often painted gay male characters as villains or people with mental disorders, while women demonstrating lesbian traits were frequently killed off to suit a white heteronormative narrative - the 'tragic lesbian' theme.

While the practice of queerbaiting is often seen as a negative, some members of the LGBT+ community view it as an improvement in the representation of queer people and queer relationships. Conversely, some believe that queercoded characters who do not end up cementing that queerness (often by entering a canon relationship) amount to queerbaiting, regardless of extenuating contexts or circumstances, including the "queerness" of the creators themselves or the LGBT+ representation and diversity already contained within such media.

Queerbaiting in marketing

Television shows are the most prominent users of queerbaiting tactics, as queer audiences bring in more viewers and therefore more money for the production. It includes creators and marketers of a program visual providing cues to a queer audience that inclusion is present, even though they have no intention of following through with the relationships or representation. Thus, "baiting" the audience into watching the material.

Queerbaiting in celebrities

Many celebrities have been forced to explicitly label themselves as queer or gay on social media to appease the masses who believe they are "queerbaiting" to gain attention. These celebrities include but are not limited to Cardi B, Rita Ora in 2018, and Halsey in 2017, for what she called her "celebrity coming out", after many accused her of faking her bisexuality to sell albums. For Halsey, she had already come out before becoming a celebrity, but was forced to come out again for the public eye.

In 2020, singer-songwriter-actress Dove Cameron was forced to come out again on social media after she teased a visualizer for her song "We Belong" with a women-loving-women emoji. When the song released, it wasn't explicitly about her being queer despite it including queer couples in the cartoon, which outraged people. She was confused about the reception because she had only wanted representation for the community in the cartoon. Despite her fear of publicly coming out and reluctance to do so, she was forced to go on Instagram live and tell the community that she "wasn't queerbaiting because I am queer." Her friends, family, and everyone in her life knew she was queer already. She hated that she was forced to say she was queer instead of just living her life and not defining herself. She publicly claimed it was weird that the community itself demanded she not only label herself, but show them proof of her sexual orientation.

In 2022, eighteen-year-old actor Kit Connor was harassed over playing a bisexual character while not being explicitly out as queer. After being accused of being straight while playing a bisexual character, he attempted to quell the masses by releasing a statement that fans don't know his sexuality better than he does. The alleged fans continued to accuse him and the creatives behind Heartstopper for queerbaiting by not casting a queer actor to play the role. Kit ultimately was forced to come out as bisexual and expressed his disappointment over being forced to come out before he was ready. He follows several queer actors that have either been forced out of the closet after being accused of queerbaiting.

An argument was made in an online article that an actor isn't their character, and to assume an actor is - or isn't - queer is harmful to the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole, as it falls into harmful stereotypes. The article further expressed how accusing an actor of queerbaiting without knowing their sexuality or labelling them is constricting for everyone. At the end of the day, it's not anyone's place to speculate about another human's sexual orientation.

Media

For more information regarding Queerbaiting in media, please see the queerbaiting trope page.

When speaking from a strictly media perspective, queerbaiting refers to the usage of creating an illusion of queerness around a specific character or characters to lure in audiences. The creator or writers manipulatively use subtext to imply a romantic attraction but have no intention to ever make it canon. This includes the posture of characters, interactions, conversations, and even blatantly making one of the characters queer while refusing to acknowledge the other. It is a recurrent and still popular trope in media, with the most common version being a "dreamscape" where two characters are inherently queer in that world but not in the "canon" storyline.